Research, Tools and Favorite Videos on Major Trends

On March 17th 2012, I had the honor and privilege to present to a very special industry group, AIPAGIA. While my attendance was brief, the time I spent with the members of this industry group was incredible. It was very reminiscent of my past participation at similar conferences when I was a member of AIPAGIA back in the late 1990s. There was a tremendous amount of energy, collaboration, collegiality and idea exchange at the conference that you tend to miss in larger insurance industry venues and forums.

I would like to to take this opportunity to thank AIPAGIA President Michael Barron, Gloria Grove, George Bode, and Tom Koch for inviting me to present to the AIPAGIA membership my thoughts and views on the major trends, new realities and opportunities that exist in the affinity insurance industry. In addition, I’d like to thank Al Drowne of Axis Capital, who worked with me on the original whitepaper focused on this topic. And last but not least, Gillian Johnson of Comperemedia for sharing her extremely valuable study on top 5 bank direct mail volumes research report.

Also, thanks and kudos to Dave Brennan, Tom Bohde and the rest of the Met Life team in sponsoring this event along with what turned out to be a major contribution they made towards the success of this conference.

Presentation Topic: The Changing Face Of Affinity Group Distribution

The insurance industry and the traditional affinity group business model is undergoing profound change and being redefined by four primary forces:

Legal and regulatory challenges – in addition to major reforms, there are many legal challenges designed to protect the consumer privacy and ensure equity (through minimum loss ratio requirements, etc.).

At the top of this blog is a section entitled “Useful Links (to online resources)” i.e.links to many research sites that I use to track major trends. Another tool I use is “Google Alerts” that I set-up for tracking trends on such topics as: Life Insurance, Group Insurance, Healthcare, Health Insurance, Disability Insurance, Healthcare reform and many of the companies I follow.

On the right-hand side of this blog are links to some of the many research papers and articles that I used for this presentation.

And last but not least, here are some pertinent videos on recent trends in affecting markets, business and marketing:

Here is a Wall Street Journal video on the return of 3 million manufacturing jobs aka”on-shoring”